I really wish that people would research whether a plant is a problem everywhere before making these determinations. I have never lived anywhere that wisteria was considered anything other than a prized ornamental, fussed over and people drive for hours to see beautiful specimens. It's exhausting.
I'm with Ara. I typically use cornstarch to thicken sauces. It requires half the thickener of flour and doesn't have the floury taste. So for 1 cup of liquid, you want 1 Tbsp. of cornstarch. Just combine the cornstarch and liquid while cold because adding cornstarch to hot liquid will create clumps.
I'm really picky about potato salad and will pretty much only eat my own.
Russet potatoes - peeled, cubed and cooked in salted water until they break apart easily with a fork
drain and put in a bowl still warm, add olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper, Stir occasionally while cooling. Add chopped celery and onion that have been sweated until fairly soft. Add diced hard boiled egg, chopped bacon, and chopped dill pickles. Add Best Foods mayonnaise or homemade and spicy brown mustard. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Green Chilaquiles - it's a Mexican breakfast dish.
2 lbs. tomatillos
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
4 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
12 corn tortillas, quartered
oil for frying
Combine first 4 ingredients in 2 cups of water, bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Simmer until everything is soft, about 15-20 minutes. Puree in blender.
Deep fry tortillas in oil. Combine fried tortillas and sauce in a saute pan, heat through, stirring to cover the chips with the sauce.
Many people like these with eggs, scrambled or fried. We like them with sour cream, particularly if we make them spicier.
Jenkin - That would be me. I'm happy to talk to you about off grid living any time you want. You can PM me to talk that way or I can give you more contact info in the PM.
I'm like Heather Staas, I love sex but not casual touch.
For me, it's because my boundaries were constantly crossed in this area so I'm only comfortable being the initiator of touch. The only exception is small children because they are children. I'm not a fan of house cats because they are pushy about wanting to be petted. I've trained my dog to go away when I'm done petting her.
I absolutely loathe cuddling with people but stuffed animals are great.
Trace - Location matters a lot. Our dry season is long and very hot, nothing much survives. Anything that is irrigated gets eaten to the ground. This time of year the deer eat everything including things that are deer resistant. They are bulking up before the winter. The two things that they don't eat are foxgloves and rosemary, but I doubt that they would make good forage for anything. I would suspect that the OP's climate is more like mine being in Texas but maybe they get some summer rain.
I have not tried a large area, but it doesn't survive without irrigation where I live and the wildlife loves eating it. I don't know what you deer pressure is, but they love it.
Hi Matt, thanks for the response. They have pecked her bloody and are not letting her drink or eat. I have separated her at this point. Unfortunately I am going out of town for the weekend and my kid will be watching everything. I'm going to let her wounds recover but I'm not sure how to reintroduce her to the flock when that is done. Or if I'm now going to have to keep apart indefinitely.
So one of my hens is being picked on unforgivingly. I have given her some space, that just seems to have made it worse. The rest of the flock have pecked at her to the point that she fled. I now have her in my greenhouse and honestly I would rather cull or release the rest of the flock than give up on her. I don't think that I can be kind or care about the rest of them at this point. Does anyone else have this kind of experience with their livestock?
I'm not sure that they are actually rancid or if they just smell rancid to me. Ever since I was pregnant, 33 years ago, I have pregnancy nose. That said, I would prefer descented fats and some help achieving that.
So I have looked through the lard posts on here and google and still feel like something is missing. Now granted the butchers here in rural southern Oregon aren't great, most of them don't even know what leaf lard is, but how do I get a usable product from general lard. I have scoured the internet and most instructions fail. The lard smells rancid and/or strongly porky and not in a good way. The best advice I've seen is lots of water, salt and baking soda. The baking soda has made a significant difference. I have a very sensitive nose. I suspect that is part of the problem. Any advice that I haven't read yet would be appreciated.
I don't know. I think that what attracted me to my ex-husband was I thought that he could give me a normal life, but he lied. I think a big problem in relationships is that people lie about who they are and what they want. That is the liar's fault.
Burra - that's really sweet. I get what you mean. I like touch but the right touch and sometimes these conversations go in an entirely different direction than we were anticipating. So funny.
I like to cook and care for people, if they won't let me, it's a problem.
John - From what I have gathered, things in Australia are vastly different than the US. It doesn't appear that things vary as much as the US from state to state or territory to territory. Here one state may rely heavily on property tax, another primarily sales tax, so it really isn't useful to look at property taxes in a vacuum. Personally, I have no taxable income, so I don't care about that. Oregon has no sales tax but it makes up for this in alcohol prices which are double Californias.
To my mind, the problem with both of these things is that they get in the way while working. I like closer fitting clothing while working because it doesn't block my view or fall on the ground while completing tasks. The same reason why long skirts or dresses aren't functional for me. They get dirtier and aren't easier. Yes, they fit many sizes which is great as non-functional outerwear, like to attend social events or evening walks, but that's not my life. Just like long nails, they aren't practical for my lifestyle, if they are for yours, good on you.
I live on land that's not suitable for conventional agriculture in southern Oregon. The property taxes aren't very high but that's because most of the property is zoned for forest. It's well suited for livestock though and food forest. So I would say that it very much depends on what you are trying to do on your homestead. The EFU (exclusive farm use) land is flat and in the valley. I didn't want to live in a fish bowl where everyone can see what I'm doing so that didn't appeal to me. My property feels very isolated despite being only 3 miles to town.
When people ask about taxes I always ask, which taxes, property, income, sales or something else? What works for one person might not for another.
I'm hoping that the ground squirrels will have largely given up by that time. They are creatures of habit. I don't know if the same is true about gophers. I put it under my entire raised bed garden. There really wasn't any other choice.
They are a nightmare here this year. They eat everything and they are too quick to catch. I would probably need a couple hundred chickens free ranging my 80 acres to control them. I think that it was our wet, cold spring. I can't believe that I'm saying this but I'm hoping for a warm spring next year.
Nicole - I'm not saying that you should, but rather that's the point of it. Everyone should do what they want. I have my kids. I'm not looking for a baby daddy or husband, just a partner. My choices are likely very different from yours and that's fine. Honestly, I settled when I was younger because I wanted more kids. I don't regret the kids, but their fathers were useless, but that's just my experience. Hopefully you can find what you are looking for. I wish you all the best.
I'm extremely introverted but I spend so much time on my property that when I go out and finally interact with others (not my adult kids), I can actually be quite chatty. Sometimes I look back and think, was that me? That doesn't sound like me.
Bars are really only for drinkers and hookups. The alcohol deals with the introvert problem. It's a quick and easy way to get laid, period. Not for relationships.
Personally as far as philosophical questions, I like something more along the lines of who is your favorite philosopher, Kant, Sartre, Foucault, the Stoics etc. Nietzsche is a red flag for me, although that's more of a problem with his followers than anything else.
Jenny - My current home is 1600sf and it is too large for me and my adult kid who is living here. It's also horribly set up. My house in the SF Bay Area was 1650sf and had 4 bedrooms, 2 bath and a family room. My family of 6 lived comfortably in that. This house when I moved in had one bedroom. We have since added a second bedroom.
And I think that's the main problem with larger houses, poorly utilized space.
I wanted to build my own small strawbale house, but building additional houses is problematic in Oregon.
The reason I like small or tiny houses is that we can all have our own. We functioned fine in our Bay Area house because know how to leave each other alone, not everyone is skilled at this or has any experience with this.
Our plan is to build detached bedrooms/tiny spaces for individuals. And then have community spaces, like an outdoor kitchen and sharing the larger houses common rooms.
I wouldn't try to make a pressure cooker. That could go horribly wrong and kill somebody. You often can find them at garage sales or on craigslist. Not all of them are super expensive.
John - As far as honestly goes, I think that one of the problems is that people are not honest with themselves. I truly believe that my ex didn't know that he didn't want to get married or have kids. I don't think that he believed he had a choice. Sucks for him and for me, but even more so for his kids.
Anyway, big red flags for me, is anyone that wants to date someone much younger than them, has hyper specific weight or looks requirements. Is 50+ and says they want to have kids in the future, my guy you've had 30+ years for that. I could go on, but it's slim pickings out there for women with standards. Sad but true. And most of us would rather be alone, or with occasional lovers, than settling.
We have a lot of these type threads. Maybe check out some of the others. And I agree with Alice, some more information would be good.
I bought a property with two houses that already fit government requirements. Around here unless someone complains and you have some building and septic that look normal you can get away with adding greywater systems, rainwater harvesting and lots of other things without any problems. I would not buy raw land because that's when they start wondering how you are doing things.
I think Oregon is lovely. I moved here 3 years ago. The heat can be bad but the winters are fairly mild so I can grow some things year round. I think being near major cities but not in one. It's 6 hours to the SF Bay Area and 4 1/2 hours to Portland. But that's just me.
People can eat whatever they want, obviously. But all food creates heat/energy, that's what a calorie measures.
Personally, I don't do hard labor if it's above 70F. I have different activities that I do at different times of day. In the hot season, I work outside from 6-10 in the morning, everything else is in the house. In the cold season, it goes the other way.
I did a google search and it seems it's mostly about it not tasting good and having a bad texture, which makes sense, cabbage doesn't reheat well either. I did find some recipes for canning colcannon which includes cabbage. I just did a search for canning potatoes and cabbage, maybe that will help you.
I think it's likely that people don't can cabbage often because it keeps very well in other ways.
Jan - I think that's the point. For many of us, a late spring to mid-fall lack of rainfall is normal. Where I live it varies, this year we had a wet, cold spring. That proved worse for my garden than the previous year's heat dome. The immense pest pressure was way worse than the previous year's heat. Although we had just as bad heat this year as last, it was just later in the year.
Personally, on my land, I take a multi-faceted approach. Everything from rainwater harvesting, greywater systems, drip irrigation and hugelkultur. Ponds are generally not allowed but I do have a few.
Pretty much, almost nothing is going to grow here without irrigation. Plants left to their own devices have a reproduction rate of 1/10,000. That's unrealistic for me.
The areas I cultivate I do so intensively. But other areas are well suited to livestock, so that's my solution.
It says that our winter in southern Oregon is supposed to be mild and dry, that's the opposite of what the locals are saying. But if they mean just winter, they could be right. Often fall and spring are wetter and colder than winter, it's weird but true. We usually think in terms of wet vs. dry season. We've had a wet year so far. We will see.
I don't understand why California needs to be saved. They are the leading state in the nation. Because their economy is so large, they can influence manufacturers, that's a good thing. So Cal is obviously more problematic than Nor Cal given that it's a desert. But that's not different than the SW and still better than the south. Wet bulb, anyone.
The SF Bay Area already highly encourages bike travel, having bike lanes, allowing bikes on BART and buses. In SF, they have biking displays/protests.
